Fairy Tale Spotlight: Star Trek: The Motion Picture [Book Review]

[This blog kind of assumes you have seen the movie and so recklessly spoils a lot of what happens in it.]

"Star Trek: The Motion Picture" is a movie... but it is also a book written by Gene Roddenberry and published in 1979. Let's take a moment to contemplate the mind of someone who is willing to literally title something called "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" the book! It reminds me when they made "Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game." Yes, that actually happened. In my opinion, he should have titled this book "Star Trek: Vejur." What a missed opportunity.

Complaints about the title aside, I read this book because the movie fascinated me even though it is the most poorly-paced Star Trek movie of all time. I'm not joking. Have you seen this movie? It's a whole lot of scenes with people staring at things with no dialog. It was full of raw time-fillers with very little explanation. There's even a director's cut and an extended edition that adds more of those scenes into it that you never asked for!

Well, the book is here to save the day! Yes, those scenes are in the book, but it's explained through giving you the thoughts of all the crew that's dealing with it. Finally these scenes have context and they are not boring. This book actually better explains the movie better than the movie did.

There is also a lot of content that flat out was not in the movie. For example, Kirk actually gets an emergency message about Vejur within a special chip implanted in his brain. No, this is not a transhuman thing. Relax. It's a special communication device that Starfleet can use in cases of extreme emergency, and that's all it is. For some reason, I thought I remembered this scene from the movie, but when I checked, it wasn't there. Whoops!

Another thing about this book that was not completely clear in the movie concerned Lieutenant Ilia. Her race is a Deltan which makes everyone horny when she is around them. Now, to be fair, the movie kind of points this out, but it's very subtle about it. The book just dives into it even to the point that Sulu has trouble standing up because he doesn't want to show that he has an erection. By the way, I loved that scene. I read it four or five times and kept on laughing. Gene Roddenberry is a literary genius just for that scene alone. Where can I find more?!

One thing that does stand out about this story is how kind of messed up Kirk is throughout the story. He's a captain that has been somewhat lamed by becoming an admiral. He struggles with this for the entire book, but I don't really fault it for that. It seemed like a realistic take on why captains shouldn't leave their ships if they love it so much.

Spock also shined a lot in this book. Absolutely shined. Who he was and the reasons he could not achieve a pure state of logic was fascinating. He even came across as angry with himself and everyone around him when he returned to his ship. I really liked what they did with him.

Now, the ending is what it is. It's not bad, but it is a lot of atheistic bullcrap that we've all had to deal with at one time or another in the Star Trek universe. It's the whole "we all create God in our image" crap. It's backwards, but people who think like that are living their lives in the wrong direction anyhow.

That said, Gene wrote a good book, and I don't want to do anything other than recommend it. Also, I recommend it more than the movie. Even if you've seen the movie, you should read this book. And you can read this book because it is amazingly still in print. You can get it right off the shelf or on an ebook. If for no other reason, just read it to see Sulu trying to hide his bulgy wulgy. Hahaha!

Extra content: About a week went by after I finished this blog when I remembered something about the book that I really intended to mention from the beginning. So in the book, the Enterprise approaches the space cloud, later known as Vejur, in a very particular way. The book very heavily explains this.

The Enterprise is at warp, but they are flying around Vejur while still facing it. This is a maneuver called "conical interception." The idea is that since the ship is making a wide arc around the target while always facing it, it comes across as nonthreatening. It makes it look like the ship is in no way going in for an attack, making itself very clear and visible for a long period of time.

This conical interception also makes it appear as if the ship is flying sideways. If you have ever seen the original series before it got remastered, this will mean the world to you. I am not sure if it was intended, but the sideways flying Enterprise seen in the original series might have been realistic! Funny, huh?!

This blog was written on February 28, 2023.

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